Prue Leith has revealed her romance with late husband Rayne Kruger began life as a secret affair.
The Great British Bake Off judge, 83, admits she had "a long affair" with fellow South African Rayne, who passed away in 2002 at the age of 80, and recalls how her late husband was married to her mother's best friend.
Writing in her upcoming autobiography, Prue will detail how property developer and author Rayne eventually left his wife, who was the late South African actress Nan Munro.
But Prue insists she never asked her late husband to leave his wife.
The TV star admits she had reservations about revealing how she met her husband in her memoir, but decided in the interesting of keeping things interesting for the reader, opted to tell the whole truth.
"I never asked him to leave his wife because I was very happy," Prue confesses to Kate Thornton on the White Wine Question Time podcast.
"I had none of the duties of life and all of the pleasures of somebody who loved me. I wasn’t pressing for marriage. They all remained great friends.
"We did have 13 secret years and nobody ever guessed because we were discreet.
"But it was easier in a way because he was a family friend, chairman of my company, and he’d helped me enormously and everyone knew we were great friends."
She added: "We didn’t go out to dinner or anything that would create any kind of suspicion. If people saw us together they thought it was because we worked together."
Prue goes on to explain how surprisingly, Nan forgave both Rayne and Prue when she discovered the affair.
Discussing how she and her late husband remained pals with Nan, Prue added: "Rayne was determined. He said, ‘We don’t have enough friends to lose them. We all love each other, we’re not going to let this destroy us’. And Nan took her cue from Rayne, or he from her.
"I remember one of her really famous actress friends said to her, ‘How can you go and have weekends and stay with Prue and Rayne? That woman, she’s a witch, she stole your husband.'
"And Nan said, ‘Are you going to have me every weekend? Shall I come to you instead?’ She said, ‘They are my friends, I love them. Yes, it’s been hard, but Prue’s still Prue.' She was amazingly forgiving. And an extraordinary woman."
Prue was 62 when Rayne died in 2002. The Bake Off star has since remarried, tying the knot with English fashion designer John Playfair in 2016.
* Follow Mirror Celebs on Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter and Facebook .
